WEEK 11 | ‘BUILD A WORLD’ PROJECT #4

CIMEXIA: UPDATED ANIMATIC

This week’s task focused on acting and expression. We took this as an indication to attempt posing a subject in the position we want for our next storyboard and taking a picture as reference.

Criticism noted from class:

The audience did not know where they were in the second sequence (aware the characters are in some kind of cave but it was too dark to understand they were in the hive)

Mentioning of an establishing shot of the hive in the second scene to place where the characters are.

The continued reference of the egg as “treasure”. The audience was aware the ants wanted whatever was attached to the human but was unrecognized as an ant egg (the objective of the narrative was unclear)

Explosion — bigger, louder.

The first sequence would make a good one minute animatic by itself.

Changes made:

We extended the chase sequence for the entire animatic, removed the second scene as we found too many issues with it.

With reference to acting in class we removed the human’s mask and goggles, allowing a rapport with the audience through expressions. I took images of poses for my shots as drawing reference for the body. We used the facial model sheet of ‘Flynn Rider’ from ‘Tangled’ (2010, dir. Byron Howard, Nathan Greno) as facial style inspiration.

Explosion — bigger, louder.

The objective is eating/killing the human instead of an egg (reaction shot of dribbling ants)

I would like to note, what seems like a completely changed animatic is instead reused templates from the first and a reshuffling of the shotlist. Also, at this point I was used to drawing the backgrounds in the style chosen in Week Nine, so editing or painting new backgrounds to match did not take long. Wonderfully, I found this time the edited storyboard (below) was a lot more inclusive of everyone else in the group.

Unfortunately I do not believe this animatic was better than our first. Perhaps because it had lost its initial excitement and flair once we picked it apart. Yet, in terms of responding to criticism and creating an acceptably understandable animatic I believe that yes, it was better.

Update: I showed it to some friends outside the class for feedback and they thought the second one was better. Sweet.

Examples of the pose shots that thankfully Hristo posed for (below). With a real life reference I could accurately place limbs in the correct positions for the subject than guesswork:

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A similar technique we were shown in class of acting in animation (below):

My first time animating dust FX. I do not think it matches very well, nor acts the way dust does but I believe it created the impression it needs to for the animatic.

These goggle shots above were also referenced from pose pictures.

Silhouettes inspired from characters from Katie’s Cowboy shot of the ‘gang’ at the end of the animatic.

FINAL REFLECTION

We did not get to present our second animatic in class this week, but I believe we did well. My time working in groups has been noticeably varied, but I have grown a great appreciation of other people’s involvement in my work throughout this first semester, and hopefully they enjoyed my contributions to theirs.

Thanks again to my group this week and everyone else I have worked with.